


and only then we'll know if it was worth to become a ghost

by Spooks (agonizer)



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-01-26 16:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12561672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agonizer/pseuds/Spooks
Summary: It has never been easy, convincing Shane of the existence of the supernatural. It doesn't become incredibly much easier once Ryan becomes a ghost himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, the major character death warning is implicit, I'm not planning on actually murdering someone off during this story -- but since Ryan's a ghost in this, well. Gotta die first. But no death in this is for angsty purposes, pinky swear, there will be very little angst here. Title of this story and inspiration for it comes from The Deadly Syndrome's "I hope I become a ghost" and Akron/Family's "Don't be afraid you're already dead."
> 
> And to quote the Deadly Syndrome: there's nothing sad about it.

The physics of being a ghost, it turns out, take some getting used to.

Ryan isn’t quite sure how long he’s been dead – he remembers something about Los Angeles traffic, but by the time he comes to, it must have been a few weeks. And he feels… oddly at peace with it. If this is how death feels, Ryan wonders why ghosts haunt people, because he’s got no complaints at all, no unfinished business nagging at him.

It’s not so bad, all things considered.

So why, in God’s name, is he stuck being a ghost and not kicking it with Biggie in the afterlife?

Ryan goes about it as, well, logically as he can. He checks in on his family; they’re grieving, but they seem … well. Appropriately bereft. He doesn’t get the feeling that he needs to Patrick Swayze his way into their lives to comfort them. They’ve got each other, they’re doing okay, all things considered.

So he thinks if maybe he got murdered, who would be the most likely suspect? But it doesn’t feel right, the more he thinks about it, he doesn’t feel particularly much of anything, when he thinks about his death.

He returns to his family, but, truth be told, the whole thing is kind of bumming him out, which leaves him unsure just what to do with himself. New people have already moved into his apartment, and Ryan doesn’t feel particularly comfortable with haunting them for no good reason. 

He’s kind of tempted to. Just because he _can_ , and if that is the rationale behind all ghosts, then man, he’s had it all wrong so far. 

So for a while, Ryan goes to work – just hangs out, so he’s not quite so alone, and he can tell his friends are sad but getting better, hell, there’s a photo of him in the breakroom now, and tries his ghostly hands at what his body allows him to do.

It’s little things: making the hairs stand on his co-worker’s necks when he stands a little too close, making them paranoid by whispering too close to them, opening and closing cupboard doors. 

He gets tired of it pretty quickly. He gets tired of not being able to _communicate_ with anyone, and it’s only after he has already been doing his haunting the office bit for a few days that Shane comes into work for the first time. It’s a little odd, Ryan thinks, but it’s not like he has been checking the schedule and who’s on holiday.

But Shane looks … tired. His eyes are vaguely bloodshot, and when he interacts with everyone else, his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s odd, Ryan thinks, and he worries, and when Shane doesn’t seem to visibly perk up over the next few days, Ryan decides to follow him home.

*

Shane’s place doesn’t look great, exactly. It’s messy, there’s Chinese take out containers littering a few too many surfaces, but. It’s not worse than Ryan has seen it after a few too late, too drunken nights that ended on Shane’s couch.

So, he’s a little concerned, but not too worried – Shane seems okay, ish. Still. Ryan tries to make himself useful, far as he can, because hell, Shane’s looking tired – he’s come home and curled up straight on his couch, and Ryan decides to figure out what all he can do with his non-corporeal form. If the bin’s positioned just right, he can swipe the container from the kitchen counter into it, but. It’s a lot of trial and error, and he makes a bigger mess than he cleans, the first couple days. 

But hey, he’s trying. 

And it makes a difference, at least a little bit. Sometimes he’ll clean something up. Sometimes it’s saving a video Shane’s been working on when he falls asleep next to his laptop. Little things, but Shane perks up, little by little, and, in perfect Shane fashion, he doesn’t question the ongoings in his very own apartment. 

Because of course he doesn’t. 

Ryan feels a little better about himself, about his spot in the afterlife, but. He’s still, effectively, haunting for no good reason, and that won’t stand. 

*

SHANE.

The letters appear on his mirror once it has been properly fogged up, and Ryan feels a lot anxious, and a little voyeuristic, sticking around in Shane’s bathroom waiting for him to get out of the shower and see his message. 

It’s been _weeks_ , and Ryan really, really needs to start communicating with someone. And it has taken a little while, to figure out he could write on mirrors, but hey. It works.

As soon as Shane maneuvers all 6 foot 4 of himself out of the shower, Ryan hence pointedly stares absolutely anywhere but at his very naked friend, hands covering his eyes, and only peeking through to see if he has finally put on a towel. Shane squints at it for a moment, then makes a little “huh” noise, then draws a little heart around his name with an amused little smile, before he shrugs his shoulders and leaves the bathroom.

Ryan feels like tearing his own hair out, but he’s pretty sure ghost hair doesn’t grow back.

*

The next few days are powered by petulance alone. Ryan has always known Shane to be a dense guy, and he fully expects him to shrug off any sign of supernatural presence in his home, so Ryan gets huffy about it. 

It’s little things – he moves Shane’s coffee table just an inch or two so he’ll bang his toe in the morning, leaves the fridge door open so his milk spoils, opens his drawers so he’ll hit his knees or shove his car keys off the kitchen counter. It doesn’t do very much to convince Shane that he’s haunted, but Ryan at least gets some gleeful satisfaction out of it. 

What it does do, after Ryan has spent a few days rearranging his living room in miniscule ways, is make him buy some ginko extracts, for an ailing memory. Ryan heaves a heavy sigh. 

“Is that your rational explanation? Your memory’s going and you keep forgetting to shut the fridge door?” 

Ryan crosses his arms, stands next to Shane at the kitchen counter, and watches him down two pills with a big gulp of water. 

“I swear to god, Shane—” And suddenly Shane halts, peers right at him for a second, then through him, and quizzically draws his eyebrows together, as if he has heard him, for the first time in weeks, and—and then he shakes his head, his whole face crestfallen, with a heavy, heartfelt sigh. 

“You’re losing it, Madej, straight up losing it,” he whispers to himself, and retrieves a beer from the fridge that is entirely too warm to be considered pleasant, but, well. It still accompanies Shane to his couch, only to be followed by another beer, and another, and if a few hours later, when Shane retreats to bed, Ryan hears soft sniffling coming from behind closed doors, he stays too far away to be sure.

(Ryan stops leaving the fridge door open after that.)

*

“You know, Bergara, I saw you the other day.”

Ryan freezes in his spot, sitting incorporeally in a seat in Shane’s living room, watching whatever tv show Shane has tuned the tv to – Ryan has actually figured out how to somehow change the channels with his mind, but, well, Shane’s taste in television is alright with him – but Shane, sitting on the couch to his right, isn’t actually looking at him. Instead, his friend is turned to a photo of the two of them sitting on a small cabinet next to the couch.

“Or, well, the other night. When I was nodding off. I could’ve sworn you stood in the doorway to my bedroom. Just. Standing there, you know? Like a weirdo. You’re a weirdo, Ryan Bergara.”

Shane pauses and drops his gaze to the floor, and he takes his glasses off so he can rub at his eyes.

“I guess I’m the weirdo, right?” He huffs out a laugh, but it tapers off into a shaky breath and Shane hangs his head between his shoulders. “I’m seeing dead people, and Bruce Willis isn’t even one of them. Feels like a lose-lose.” 

Ryan wants to say something, do something, and his brain is racing for something, _anything_ to reach out. His eyes dart back to the tv, and Ryan takes a deep breath (like he needs it, dead as he is), and concentrates.

The channel changes, and the petite CW blonde says, “Shane, I—” Shane looks up, a little confused, a little startled, and the channel switches again, “need to,” says the news host, zap, “talk to,” a cheerful aerobics instructor shouts, “lawnmowers!” Billy mays ends the sentence, and Shane barks out a semi-mental laugh, and Ryan curses a loud “oh for fuck’s sake!”

So close, he’s been _so_ close, and now. 

“I am absolutely fucking losing it.” Shane says, incredulously, with a nervous laugh still underlying his words, and reaches for the tv remote and turns the screen off, “I need to get out more,” then gets off the couch and makes a quick exit from his apartment. 

Ryan stays in his seat, sullenly staring at the black screen.

*

He needs to get creative, Ryan decides, and he’s got a better handle on his ghostly powers now, anyway.

It’s relatively easy, he realizes, to possess someone who’s already not in full possession of all their wits. Possession is an ugly word, Ryan decides, because what he really does is _subtly_ influence Quinta, once drunk out of her mind at another office party (and man, Buzzfeed looks even stranger as an outsider, Ryan thinks, when he’s not part of the ongoings), to order a Ouija board online. 

It takes a few days to arrive, mostly because Ryan has _some_ standards, thankyouverymuch, and he doesn’t want to communicate via a plastic Hasbro toy – and it takes a little longer to get something a little more stylish and wooden to ship from … well. Probably the same Chinese factory Hasbro gets their Ouija boards from. 

He decides not to dwell on it too much. 

Besides, he has better, more important things to do. 

Quinta seems properly perplexed when the package arrives, but, as either a side effect of this not being her first drunken shopping trip or a certain desensitization that comes with working at Buzzfeed, she doesn’t question it too much. Ryan is pretty grateful when she doesn’t send it back immediately, and instead it ends up in the break room with a lot of other Halloween decorations. 

Shane notices it a few days before Halloween, then continues to dance around the Ouija board for a while. Ryan keeps hovering around him, whispering and persuading and pleading with him to take it home, and when Shane finally does, he’s not entirely sure why he’s doing it.

*

Getting him to use it takes even longer. Ryan keeps up his ’hauntings,’ moves Shane’s photographs around, pulls the covers off him when he sleeps, or turns on a faucet when he’s not in the room, to … predictably little success.

It’s a Friday night, the both of them watching tv on the couch, when Ryan loses his patience and pulls the Ouija board from its spot in the book case with all the force he can muster.

It’s loud, it’s messy, and the board lands on the floor followed by several books, enough to startle Shane from his spot on the couch, and he squints at the board on the floor for minutes before he gets up. 

It’s a testament to his failing mental state, Shane thinks, when he actually gets up to pick up the board, and lights the candle that’s already sitting on his coffee table.

“Ooookay,” he inhales, then breathes out deeply, “If there are any ghosts here, I, uh—blow out that candle over there.”

Shane has set the Ouija board up on the coffee table, and positions himself at the edge of his couch. Ryan, obligingly, blows out the candle. 

“Huh,” Shane makes, eyebrows furrowed, “This place is draftier than I thought.” And it’s almost enough to make Ryan scream, but. Regardless.

Shane sighs, deeply, like a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and / or attempting the dumbest thing he has ever done, and for a second, Ryan thinks he’s going to abandon the Ouija board, but no, he set the planchette down on the board and places both his hands on it. 

“If any of my neighbors are hearing me right now, yes, absolutely, it’s fair game to call a psychiatrist right about now.” He waits a second, but there’s no response from his neighbors at least, and Ryan can see him swallowing hard, eyes closed, steeling himself. “Alright. Is there—are there—any … ghosts, present, here, right now?”

Ryan concentrates, and places both his hands on the planchette as well, and moves it over to the upper left corner, ‘yes.’

Shane, for a second, just stares. Then stares for a few more seconds. “Okay. Okay.” He pauses, clearly thinking over what he wants to ask next, “Are you someone I … know?” Again, Ryan moves their hands over to yes, and watches Shane’s face, intently. 

He’s hard to read, that guy, Ryan thinks – he looks either likes he’s concentrating, or maybe his brain short-circuited and switched to standby mode. One of the two, Ryan reasons.

“This is fucked up,” Shane says out loud, worries his lower lip between his teeth, then powers on, “Is it—are you… Ryan?” 

And the way his voice wavers on the last word is almost enough to break Ryan’s dead heart, and it takes him a second to move the planchette over to ‘yes’ for the third time in a row.

And that’s it, Shane stops dead in his tracks, and doesn’t ask anything for long, quiet moments. Ryan takes matters into his own hands, and moves the planchette over to the letters he needs.

F- O- R- “What?” R- E- A- L.

And that gets Shane to snort out a surprised laugh, and Ryan feels pretty damn pleased with himself, like some of the tension is finally draining out of the room.

Shane’s voice is a little steadier when he speaks again. “Are you an evil spirit fucking with me?”

 _No._ “Are you going to murder me?” _No._ “Then you’re not Ryan. I am pretty sure Ryan would be out to kill me, so. Fuck off, evil spirit.” Shane sounds bolder know, almost amused, like he’s embraced the complete insanity of the situation, a little more like when they’re working on Unsolved.

Or, well, used to be.

Ryan starts moving the planchette again.

S- H- U- T- U- P- “Hey!” M- A– D- E- J. “That’s rude.”

But Shane seems a little more at ease nonetheless. 

“Have you been here … a while?” _Yes._

His friend takes his hands off the little wooden piece to rub at his eyes, and takes a few deep, steadying breath, before he places his hands back down. 

It takes a little getting used to, the flow of communicating via moving a little planchette to and fro, especially against the natural resistance that is the weight of Shane’s humongous hands, but they get the hang of it. 

This, Ryan realizes with a sudden wistfulness, is the closest they have ever come to holding hands. A bitter sweet moment, broken only by—

“What are you wearing?” 

R – U – K – I – D – D- “No, I mean, like. Remember when we talked about ghost outfits? Are you still stuck in the same things you wore?” 

Ryan realizes he has never given that any thought, now that he could, and looks down at himself. Sure enough, it’s the last outfit he can remember putting on. 

He moves the planchette to ‘yes,’ and Shane throws his head back as he laughs. It’s a good sight, Ryan has to admit, comforting and warm, especially now that so few things are, and it feels like a liquidy warmth is pooling in his stomach. He isn’t sure when the last time has been that he saw Shane laugh, open and honest, and this just feels… right. Very right. 

For the first time in a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

After their first Ouija board conversation, things change. Ryan can tell Shane sometimes spots him, in dim light, when he’s tired or exhausted, when his brain is more susceptible to the strange, and the more he tries, the more Shane can pick up on what he says, even if just a little.

Ryan leaves messages on the bathroom mirror, or draws dicks on it, depending what he feels like, and when Shane pours himself some coffee, he sets out a second cup – two sugars, no milk, the way Ryan likes it, as a gesture of normality. In turn, Ryan makes sure Shane finds his keys when he has overslept, and that he doesn’t forget to turn the stove off when he’s running late someplace. 

When Shane comes home at the end of the day, he tells Ryan about work, once he has given him a sign that he’s home, and every other day he brings out the Ouija board when they need to have a conversation that isn’t half understood whispers. 

Sometimes Shane will ask something only Ryan knows, to reassure himself, Ryan figures, but if it puts his friend at ease, he doesn’t mind obliging.

They fall into a rhythm, somehow. It’s not perfect, it’s not _normal_ , not by a long shot, but it works.

*

_you seem uncharacteristically cool with this_

Shane passes his laptop several times before he notices that something’s written in the Word document open on the screen, but when he does, he grabs his laptop and settles onto the couch with a beer, now that Ryan’s stopped haunting his fridge. It’s a pretty neat trick, this, writing messages on the laptop, and it has taken days for Ryan to get the hang of it. 

“Well, Ryan, I figure I’m just having a psychotic break,” he tells his screen, because he doesn’t know where to look, since Ryan continues to be an invisible entity in his apartment. If he thinks about it, Shane reasons Ryan probably has to sit on his lap to actually use his laptop now.

_that’s more likely than ghosts being real?_

It makes Shane laugh, because he can _hear_ the incredulity in Ryan’s voice, even when it’s written words on a screen. Shane leans over the laptop to change the font and its color.

“There, better.” 

_not an answer_ , Ryan types out, this time in blue and VAG rounded light.

Shane leans back on the couch, shrugs. “It’s the most reasonable conclusion. People have strange reactions when—“ He halts, as if cutting himself off, tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling as he tries to find the right words. “When their good buddy Ryan dies,” he concludes, his voice even, and he looks back at the screen. 

_their good buddy ryan dies_

“Yeah. Their friend. Their bud. Their— _Ryan_.” His tone switches to chastising when his ghostly roommate puts on a song in a new window, and Vampire Weekend’s _Don’t lie_ starts filling the otherwise quiet room. 

Still, Shane chuckles, and gives another emphatic shrug. “I have never heard of anyone else who ends up haunted by their co-host. You think Regis is going to haunt Kelly when he bites the dust?”

_it’s clearly kelly that’s going to haunt regis_

“Good point.” Shane tips his beer at the screen in agreement, then takes another swig. “So. Psychotic break it is. It happens, you know? Grief is a strange thing. People go crazy.”

When Ryan doesn’t immediately respond, he tacks on, “And after three seasons of Unsolved with you, I’ve got to be prone to crazy already.” 

_dick_

*

It’s past 2 am when Shane stumbles in drunk several days later, and the fumbling, the scratching of his key at the lock have given him away long before he actually manages to get all of his gangliness through the door.

“Honey, I’m home.” His voice is slurred, and he trips a little on the carpet, before he quite gracelessly flops face first into the couch.

It’s the first time, Ryan notes, that Shane has gotten drunk since their little kitchen encounter, and it falls to him to close the front door.

“Ryan.” In the time it takes to do that, Shane has managed to turn onto his back, one arm slung over his eyes, and he groans. “Know what?”

Ryan does _not_ know what, and it’s not like he can respond, really.

“I miss ya.” There’s a very shaky breath following that sentence. “And your stupid wheezy laugh.” Some kind of laugh of his own escapes him, one that peters off into something that sounds entirely too much like a sob.

Silence falls again, Ryan unsure what to do with himself _or_ that information. He opens the bedroom door and flicks the light on, trying to silently spur Shane into action – he doesn’t want him to choke on his own vomit on the couch, and it’s, well, the least and most he can do. 

Shane, blearily, blinks his eyes open once he’s removed his arm, the light shining in from the bedroom at least annoying enough to get a reaction. When he doesn’t start moving immediately, Ryan starts turning the living room lights on and off, until Shane groans and pushes himself into a sitting position. 

“’s a good thing you’re exac—exa—” Shane sways a little, presses the balls of his hands to his eyes, and hiccups, “Jus’ as stubborn as alive.”

And he laughs again, but he gets to his feet, unsteadily, and makes his way to the bedroom.

It takes some time for Shane to fight his way out of his clothes, while Ryan darts his gaze around the room and only back to his friend to make sure hasn’t strangled himself with his t-shirt, but eventually he falls into bed, ungainly but undressed. 

Ryan covers his mostly naked friend up with the sheets, because he doesn’t know what to do with himself, or the feeling this whole interlude is leaving in his stomach. 

“Hey, Ryan?” Ryan snaps from his reverie, and Shane’s mumbling again, half his face smushed into the pillow already, eyes closed, “Thanks, buddy.” 

“You’re welcome, you’re—“ He settles his ghostly shape onto the other side of the bed, determined to watch over his friend, and he sighs, deeply, “Yeah, you’re welcome. I’m staying right here.”

*

Things change, ever so subtly, after that night.

Shane starts leaving his bedroom door open – it’s not like doors mean much to Ryan in his otherworldly state, so it’s been a thing of courtesy that Ryan stays out of it at night ever since Shane has acknowledged his presence. 

But it’s open, now.

Ryan pretends it doesn’t mean anything.

*

“Hey, Ryan?” Shane asks into a seemingly empty living room one of those evenings, between two bites of sweet and sour chicken, “Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan says, but the response sounds like wind whistling through the apartment, and Shane gets out the laptop again, sets everything up, waits for his ghostly roommate to spell something out. (It’s not as aesthetically pleasing as the Ouija board, but man, is it much faster.) 

The resulting ‘ _I don’t know_ ’, however, is exactly as dissatisfying as wind howling, and Shane looks deep in thought, for a moment. “No, I mean, why are you _here_?”

He looks up to where he assumes Ryan’s ghostly shape to be, and his face is downright unreadable, and he stays quiet for long moments that drag on to the point where Ryan can feel it in his stomach. 

Really, why _is_ he sticking around Shane’s?

“You could be haunting Bradley Cooper, you know,” Shane suddenly states, very matter-of-factly when the silence becomes too heavy, his tone doing a full 180 turn, and whatever strange tension has been rising in the room dissipates immediately, but it feels forced, a little put on.

The feeling of that moment, that look on Shane’s face, it sticks with Ryan.

*

Normality, or whatever passes for it, returns to the Madej-Bergara household, and neither of them mentions _those_ interactions again.

*

_Ghost modernism: A beginner’s guide to spectrophilia_ , the headline reads.

Shane is propped up on the couch with his laptop again, and Ryan has, for lack of a better term, cozied up to read with him. He may have figured out how to type things if Shane leaves Word open on his laptop, but actually maneuvering the internet is more work and frustration than his ghostly limbs feel willing to put up with. 

“You could be reading a little more quickly,” Ryan complains, scanning the lines at the pace Shane scrolls through them, and his friend swats at the air where he is as if he were trying to get rid of a fly. He knows Shane can’t hear him, but by now they’ve established that he can at least tell that he’s talking, if he’s close enough. 

It takes a few paragraphs before Ryan understands the gist of the article, and then he does a double take. “Shane, what the fuck are you—“ 

“I can’t even hear you and I know you’re sputtering, Ryan,” Shane says, reproachfully, but there’s a good-natured roll of his eyes, and he makes a dismissive hand gesture, “I’m just covering all my bases here. There’s either articles about disproving ghosts, or, well. This. No one’s written a how to guide about living with a dead roommate, okay? Stop sputtering.”

(A quick google search on how to revive ghosts leads him to a cheat sheet for the Sims, so Shane has abandoned that one pretty fast.)

Ryan continues to do the ghostly equivalent of flailing about, but he also doesn’t stop reading along when Shane clicks from that article to the next – an actual article about a ghost roommate, which, unsurprisingly, turns out to be about a lonely person who really wants ghostly company, thanks, Vice! – and the one after, to a reddit about people recounting their ghost encounters that, ironically, gives Ryan the creeps. 

After that, Shane’s browsing kind of veers off course, and, two beers later, when the URL changes to something with a few more x’s in the address than could be safe for work, Ryan flusters and leaves his friend to it on his own.

*

ARe U TRYIn  
G 2 BONE Me

The words appear on Shane’s bathroom mirror the next morning when he steps out of the shower, and he tilts his head to the side as he looks at them. “You did _not_ think about spacing that out first, did you?” His tone is amused, a little mocking: the ‘e’ is dropping off the mirror, and condensation is already running down the mirror and ruining the writing altogether, a little.

Ryan has been agonizing about this for days, and, well. That’s not the response he has been looking for. 

So, petulantly, Ryan opens the bottom drawer of the cupboard under the sink, to smack it into Shane’s shin – who jumps, and curses a little, and then laughs. “Ryan. _Ryan._ ” He’s still chuckling, then waggles his eyebrows, “Have you been watching me _shower_?” 

And now Ryan is losing it, hands thrown in the air, and stalks (or, the ghostly equivalent of it) out of the bathroom, to bang some cupboards in the kitchen in frustration. 

“That’s not a ‘no’, Bergara,” is all he hears shouted from the bathroom, entirely too smugly, and if he still had blood flow, Ryan knows his face would be beet red.

*

Days pass, and the bedroom door? Still open.

It’s been an hour or two since Shane has gone to bed, and Ryan has been eyeing the open doorway repeatedly ever since. 

There could be a reason why Shane was leaving the door open, right? Maybe he was being courteous. Maybe an open door improves the air flow of the apartment.

Maybe it’s just about time for Ryan to run out of excuses. 

It takes him another half hour before he convinces himself to enter the bedroom, where Shane looks to be fast asleep already – he seems a little restless, turning and tossing his oversized limbs about, but Ryan manages to make his way over to the bed, slowly. 

He tugs on the sheet, best he can, to alert Shane to his presence and when he doesn’t get an immediate reaction, he flicks the lamp on the bed stand on and off twice.

This gets Shane’s attention.

“Ryan?” Shane’s voice is sleep-groggy, and he shifts a little, enough to make Ryan stop his movements, but he doesn’t open his eyes, and Ryan tugs on the sheets once more.

“I was starting to think you would never show up.”

It’s a quiet whisper and such a simple sentence, but it confuses Ryan, deeply, and for once he’s grateful he doesn’t have any way to respond. Shane falls silent again, the sleepy kind of silence, as if he’s about to nod off, and Ryan, with some newfound courage, decides to settle in next to him for the night when the urge to becomes overwhelming.

“By the way—“ Shane interrupts himself with a yawn, just as Ryan, experimentally, cautiously, reaches out to touch his face, “I hope this isn’t a really, really weird serial killer, looking for a quick cuddle before he stabs me.” 

It makes Ryan laugh, and there’s a certain warmth that comes with it, and he can tell Shane notices, too, because a slow smile spreads over his face, and—and then he snores, softly, and Ryan breathes out. 

He’s still not sure what this is all about, but Shane seems to sleep a little more easily, now, and Ryan stays right where he is, watching his friend sleep, their faces just inches apart. This… this should be weird, he thinks, but somehow…

Ryan doesn’t sleep, not really, being a ghost and all, but he can’t help but notice how his mind feels a little less busy, here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: Every day we stray a little further from god's light, and I get closer to writing ghost sex. Seriously, though. Thank you so much for your comments and encouraging me to write on, it means the world.


	3. Chapter 3

“What ever happened to becoming a ghost cop?”

It doesn’t take long for it to become habit, Ryan joining Shane’s bed, and he doesn’t know whether that’s what strengthens their connection, or if it’s simply that sweet spot between asleep and awake that makes Shane more likely not just to talk to him, but to receive him, too. His presence, he has explained, feels like warmth or pressure next to him when he’s close, and Ryan is pretty fond of being able to produce at least that.

“I haven’t seen any other ghosts,” Ryan explains, lying on his side and watching Shane intently, Shane who is curled up with his face turned towards him, eyes closed, and probably minutes away from nodding off, but Shane hums in response nonetheless.

Ryan is never sure how much of what he says gets through, and he always breathes a sigh of relief when Shane hears him.

“Do you want to?”

Ryan thinks the question over.

His current state changes one or two things, presumably—depending on if Shane believes he is actually living with a ghost, or figures he has simply lost every last one of his marbles. He can’t reasonably deny the existence of the supernatural now that he’s rooming with a dead person, but at the same time Ryan isn’t terribly sure he wants to see, say, the Borden family with the ax still lodged in their heads.

His own existence, he figures, is proof enough for him.

“Maybe we can find you a ghost friend? I bet, whatshisname, Timmy? I bet Timmy remembers you.”

Barely contained smugness laces his tone and suggests he already knows the face Ryan is pulling at that idea, so he gives Shane a heartfelt shove in the chest, enough for him to feel it, and he laughs.

“Take it that’s a no.”

Ryan waits until he hears Shane’s breathing even out, followed by soft snoring.

“I’d rather be staying here, anyway,” he says, quietly, and pushes his friend’s messy hair out of his forehead.

*

"We could bring the show back," Ryan suggests, late at night, leaning over Shane’s shoulder while he’s buckled down over his laptop, still trying to come up with his next video series at two in the morning.

Unsolved has ended up scrapped, because it was Ryan’s baby, and continuing it without him was … somewhere between disrespectful and too much on Shane’s psyche. 

Shane doesn’t dwell on it too much, and just chuckles. "Yeah, I bring you to haunted houses and then act surprised there's a _g-g-ghost_ here by the name of Ryan."

Said ghost by the name of Ryan throws a magazine from the coffee table at him, and Shane laughs, even as he tries to dodge it with a chastising “Hey!” that kind of loses its effectiveness with his chuckling. Ryan’s grip on his ghostly capabilities has been improving, but Shane can’t say he appreciates it overly much when it’s via throwing things literally at his head.

He does appreciate being able to hear him, now and then, though. 

“You’re a dick,” Ryan informs him, but there’s laughter in his voice, and the accompanying sounds of wind whistling through his apartment. 

Shane doesn’t know when that sound became such a source of comfort, but he revels in it nonetheless.

*

“Why do you think your friend’s ghost is staying with you?”

Patty is the kind of old lady who has a cup of tea ready by the time Shane shows up at her doorstep, Ryan presumably in tow, unless Shane has somehow lost him on the 405 (he hasn’t, and he knows this, because his ghostly companion spends most of the drive changing the radio station to find songs to annoy Shane with, just so he doesn’t think too much about where they’re headed—it’s very transparent, yet very welcome), and two minutes later, he is seated in a plush armchair in a living room that reeks of old lady chic, with heavy curtains and plush carpets, the kind of place where Shane imagines grandchildren love to run about and enjoy homemade cookies.

It’s comforting, and Shane clings a little more tightly to his warm mug.

There is a mirror hanging over the fireplace, and if he looks at it out the corner of his eye, he can almost see Ryan, his shape wandering through the room, taking in the sight with curious wonderment.

(They have talked about this, or, well, Shane has talked to himself, out loud, about this, for quite a bit at home before coming here. “I’m going to see a medium. Why the hell would I ever see a medium? This is all your fault, Ryan, you died and now I have to live out all your superstitions. I should be seeing a therapist instead, I hope you know.” It has taken days to convince him, but Ryan is tired of Shane claiming plausible deniability wherever he can.)

“I don’t know that he’s real, or that I’m imagining things.”

Ryan runs a ghostly finger over the back of Shane’s neck in response, just to make a point, which makes a shiver run down his back, whereas Patty nods, thoughtfully, and the warm smile on her face doesn’t waver in the face of skepticism.

She looks like she has heard every explanation and every shape of denial already, twice at least, Shane thinks. 

“What makes you think you would imagine his presence now, then?”

Shane wets his lower lip as he thinks about what he wants to say next, and the smallest rueful smile plays on his lips. He takes another sip of his tea and stares down at the cup, unsure that his voice won’t betray him, and it takes him a few more moments before he speaks, quietly.

“Because I never told my best friend that I was—that I’m in love with him, when he was still alive,” he says, finally, and lifts his head to give Patty a small smile when he meets her gaze, a smile that cannot even begin to mask his sadness, or that his eyes are wetter than they were before. He keeps his eyes trained on the old lady, ignores the mirror over the fireplace.

Ryan freezes where he stands.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Patty’s smile is sympathetic, and she just sips her tea while she lets Shane speak. 

“I guess I always thought I still had time to do it, eventually.” Shane huffs out a laugh, and shrugs. “I bet you hear that one a lot.” 

As far as the scientific method goes, Shane knows that telling the medium anything about himself and his situation will give her entirely too much to work off of, if he wants to go through with the reading. But it’s also the first time he has gotten to speak with anyone about his situation—and now that he has pried the lid off, he finds it hard not to talk. 

Ryan, for his part, is slowly unthawing, watching the scene in front of him with a mixture of emotions that he finds hard to get a grip on. He moves closer, keeping his eyes on Shane the whole time, and eventually kneels down in front of him, so he doesn’t lose sight when his friend drops his head again. 

There’s a knot in his stomach, and part of him feels like laughing, whereas another part wants to cry and not stop for a good long while. 

By the time Shane lifts his head again, his face is slightly more composed, and he gives a dismissive wave of his hand, as if he hasn’t been sniffling. “Sorry about that.” He takes a deep breath, smiles again, shakily.

“Do you want to start the séance?” 

Ryan puts his hands on Shane’s shoulders, reassuringly, he hopes, and the shaky breath Shane lets out makes him think he has noticed his presence, the warm weight of him.

“Yeah.” His voice is still halfway broken, but he nods, and he can feel Ryan squeeze his shoulder in agreement.

*

The drive home is … quiet. One would expect a car drive alone, or, well, in company of a ghost to be quiet, but still the whole atmosphere is miles different from the one on the way there.

( _“You two have a code word,” she points out, with an amused smile, eyes closed, head tilted slightly to the side, before she furrows her brows, “Is it… I’m not sure I’m hearing it clearly, but is it—assbats?”_

 _Shane starts laughing and crying simultaneously._ )

Ryan tries switching through the radio stations again, but Shane shuts it off, quickly and definitively, and keeps his eyes fixed on the road in front of him in a way that tells Ryan not to try again. 

( _”You don’t really need me to talk to your friend, do you?” The old lady has accompanied him to the door after their séance has concluded, and he nods slowly._

 _“I needed reassurance,” Shane tells her, honestly, and the old lady pats him on the arm supportively, “You two will figure things out. I know so.”_ )

Whatever outside confirmation has kicked off in Shane’s mind, Ryan doesn’t think he likes it particularly much.

*

Things stay tense when they get home, with Shane trying his best to pay no attention to Ryan, and then stay that way, for long enough that it’s starting to drive Ryan positively mad. As much as he wants the time to think about what he has learned the day of the séance, he doesn’t want to have to do his thinking while feeling more invisible than he already is.

Shane closes the bedroom door for the first time in a while that night, and Ryan is crestfallen.

*

     STOP IGNORING  
          ME

Shane, pointedly, ignores the words on his bathroom mirror and walks out.

     PLEASE

The next word is spelled out in ground coffee on his kitchen counter, and Shane pulls a face, but he steels himself and ignores that, too.

Ryan is not so slowly but very surely losing his shit.

Hence, when Shane tries to leave the apartment to head to work, Ryan keeps the door chain firmly in place, despite all of his friend’s rattling and pushing. Shane considers climbing out the window just so he doesn’t have to deal with this situation, but discards that idea pretty quickly when he remembers how much of a drop that is, and that he can’t very well ignore Ryan if he dies and becomes a ghost, too. 

“Ryan. I have to go to work.” There’s exasperation and anger in his voice, but it’s also the first time he has actually addressed him since their day at Patty’s, and Ryan will accept that, at least.

“ _Ryan, I have to go to work,_ ” Ryan mocks in his most petulant voice, door chain unmoving, and Shane sighs heavily as he rubs his hands over his eyes.

He takes a deep breath, rolls his shoulders back, and nods, finally, with a certain amount of resignation evident in his posture. “I—I promise we’ll talk. Tonight. Okay, Ry?”

It takes a few more moments before Ryan relinquishes his hold on the door, but he does, properly appeased by the well-worn nickname, and Shane gives the testiest “ _thank_ you” as he finally makes his way out.

*

Shane doesn’t immediately acknowledge Ryan when he gets home, and by the time he makes it to the kitchen, ASSHOLE is written in bold letters and—ketchup? the smell would suggest as much—ketchup written on his kitchen counter.

He sighs, heavily, and not just because he knows dried ketchup is going to be a bitch to clean up.

“Alright. I’m sorry, Ryan. Okay? I’m—I’m sorry.” 

Ryan, arms crossed, his feet just about tapping impatiently, waits. Shane has known him long enough to be able to tell even without having to see it.

He rubs at his temples and adjusts his glasses, and they both know Ryan doesn’t really need to say anything here, so he waits. 

“I thought—I thought maybe I was imagining all of this, you know? We’ve never even heard a ghost—“ And he holds up his hands and adds, because he knows his friend is about to argue that one, “Nothing _conclusive_ , alright. I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d get… outside confirmation, I guess.”

He pauses, and starts busying himself with making a cup of coffee, just so he has something to do while he talks to the air, doesn’t have to feel quite so stupid about it all. 

“Did you not want me to be real?” Ryan’s voice is quiet, and he doesn’t know whether it will reach him, and as much as he tries to keep his words even and neutral, his tone doesn’t manage to stay in that ballpark.

Shane startles, not just because he can hear Ryan, but because the question sounds … hurt, and a little like it sometimes sounded late at night in the haunted houses they have visited. He has to swallow hard. 

“That’s—no. I wanted you to be real, just—” He licks his lips nervously and breathes out shakily after, by now he’s leaning against the kitchen counter, hands gripping the board to steady himself, almost. “If you’re real, why me? You could be anywhere. With anyone. Why be my ghost?”

He doesn’t really expect an answer, but despite himself, he holds his breath when he can feel Ryan standing closer, now, and closes his eyes.

“Because this is where I want to be,” Ryan says, before he knows what’s coming out, and surprises himself when his mouth carries on, “Because I just—I fucking love you, too, you dense motherfucker.”

And the tension breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be done in three chapters, and... well. The story didn't want to cooperate. So here we are. I do intend for chapter four to be an epilogue of sorts, and, well. Maybe I'll post that, uhhhh, outtake at some point separately. Again, thank you all so much for encouraging me to work on this <3


	4. epilogue.

Shane Madej dies a bachelor, as far as anyone else is concerned. 

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to his family and friends—Shane is a funny guy, a good guy, and he’s not terrible to look at, but at some point in his life, he stops dating and never picks it up again, no explanation given, no matter how much people like to set him up, no matter how much they nag. 

Eventually they stop, and it suits Shane just fine.

*

_The bedroom door stays open that night, and it’s an invitation Ryan doesn’t hesitate to take. Three in the morning is somewhere around the time when tiredness weighs out all usual mental barriers, and their connection is the strongest._

_“I thought you would disappear once I said it out loud,” Shane admits, whisper-quiet, and he raises one hand to keep Ryan from interjecting while he is chewing on his lower lip in contemplation before he can soldier on, “I thought you would disappear once I said it out loud even when you were still alive.”_

_“Why would I disappear?” Ryan is whispering too, “Do you want me to disappear?”_

_“Don’t be an idiot. Obviously not.”_

_It’s the first time that Ryan consciously realizes that Shane has never tried to send him away, that he has never really even complained about being haunted, for lack of a better word. Dwelling on that thought makes him feel vaguely ecstatic, now that he does._

_“Are you going to vanish, now that we’ve done this whole … heart to heart thing?” Shane’s tone aims for lighthearted and joking, but it still betrays the underlying worry of that question._

_“What, no,” Ryan sounds properly incredulous, then grins as he leans over Shane again, “I have years of catching up to do.”_

_And Shane laughs, into what has to be the strangest kiss he has ever gotten._

*

It takes some fifteen odd years and an inattentive driver on a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, but Ryan is there, when Shane comes to.

“So—” Shane trails off, not once taking his eyes off Ryan. “Guess I didn’t survive that one, huh?”

Ryan manages a sad smile, then nods, very slowly. 

“Yeah,” is all Ryan manages, and he awkwardly scratches the back of his neck. There are tears in his eyes, but there’s still a small smile on his face.

“Huh.” 

Shane seems to take it well, and Ryan looks at him for long, quiet moments. He’s aged—there’s no denying it, grey in his hair, more wrinkles on his face, deep-set laughter lines and crow’s feet around his eyes.

Ryan thinks he has never been more endeared. 

“You haven’t aged a day,” Shane says, finally, as if he heard his thoughts, and he sounds both something like awed and uncertain, like he is seeing Ryan for the first time—and in a way, he is—and Ryan flashes him a grin at that, once he’s wiped the tears from his eyes.

“I haven’t, old man,” he agrees, grin still in place. Shane looks like he wants to say something else, but Ryan doesn’t give him a chance. “Don’t lie, you’re excited you’ve got a hot, much younger boyfriend now.” 

With that, he pulls him down by his shirt, and presses a kiss to Shane’s lips without further preamble, and stays there for as long as he can—because he can, because he _can_ touch his boyfriend for the first time in so many years, he’s lost count, and he already wasted all his living years without this. 

And by god, Ryan can't even describe how ecstatic he feels. 

“So…” Shane sounds a little dazed, and there’s a goofy little grin on his face when he pulls back, “This is what we do now?”

“This is what we do now,” Ryan gives back, without hesitation, and steals another kiss—holds on tight, and so does Shane, his long arms wrapped around Ryan, and it's that full on contact he has been craving for longer than he has known.

“I guess I can live with that,” Shane mumbles, then blinks when the realization of what he’s just said hits him, and Ryan is the first one to break and laugh. “Guess I can … be dead with that?” Shane tries again, eyebrows furrowed, but he can’t help but laugh himself, and it only serves to make Ryan laugh harder.

“Oh, just shut up,” Ryan manages, finally, and leans up onto the tips of his toes so he can press another kiss to Shane’s lips, and Shane meets him halfway with no hesitation. 

It’s not normal—it’s not what people usually mean by ‘happily ever after,’ Ryan’s pretty sure, two ghosts heading off into the sunset.

But when have they ever been normal?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we have it, folks. oh my god, i can't believe what this little story spawned and how much it kicked me back into writing and into this incredibly lovely fandom, and i can't thank you all enough for being encouraging, and patient, and sticking this out with me <33


End file.
